


The Bonekeepers' Union

by Shadsie



Category: Original Work
Genre: "Joe from America", A journalist investigating a foreign culture, Animals, Characters meanigfully named for execution devices and methods, Death but little to no violence, Desert, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hardscrabble Lives, Memorials, Original myths and legends, People pushed to the margins of their society, People who work with the dead, Sci-Fi/Fantasy-ish Feel with realistic setting, Science Fiction, Skeletons, Spiritual, Unusual art projects, Walled City, bones - Freeform, dead things, philosophical, post-disaster, punny names, seeking beauty in a barren place, strange traditions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-08-07 06:56:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7704814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadsie/pseuds/Shadsie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out in the wilderness of the Divided States lay a city called Flynn... </p>
<p>Flynn is circled by walls.  The great outer wall is a fortification to protect the living.  The inner wall is a great unfinished project to honor the dead.  The inner wall was started ages ago after the terrible war that sundered the lands when a group of artists gathered up the remains of that war and tried to create beauty from them. Generations later, people who can find no other work are given the task of preparing the city's dead for the wall and continuing to build it.  </p>
<p>A foreigner from the Re-United states comes to investigate this subset of people to learn about them in order to create a record of their work and lives.... to live among them... to make unexpected friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I found out Ao3 has an Original Work section and I already have several chapters of this up on Deviant Art, so I thought "Why not?" It doesn't get read there, it's probably not going to get read here, but I figure it's worth a shot. If you like my darkfics in various fandoms, you'll probably like this. 
> 
> This is an ongoing project of mine I've been dabbling in for a couple of years. I am not entirely sure where I am going with it since it seems to be made up of many disparate ideas that I just scribble in notebooks before working out in type. The ideas came about as kind of an extension of my longtime hobby of finding, cleaning and collecting animal bones and turning them into art (something you can see at my gallery at Deviant Art) - and was inspired by the existence of things like this historically (the Roman Catacombs, Prague's infamous Bone Church... and the like). It's mostly a story about people shunted to the margins of their society by the nature of their job and caste and how they survive and find solace in one another. 
> 
> I'll post already-finished chapters at my whim. Since this is work in its raw-stages, I appreciate any feedback anyone is willing to give me - whether you like what you see or think there's great need for improvement.

 

 

**The Bonekeepers’** **Union**

**Chapter 1**

 

 

 

The dust swirled at his feet as the bus let him off unceremoniously.  As soon as he was off the steps, the doors slid shut and it sped away as if the very road it rolled upon was cursed.  This was the last stop before the city of Flynn.  The passable roads went no further.  Anyone seeking the city was required to walk across a stretch of scrubland for close to two miles.

 

Joe Murrika had never regretted wearing a suit to meet a subject until now.  He berated himself mentally for choosing black.  His wheeled suitcase rolled gently behind him over the plain.  His grip on the pull-handle became slick with sweat in short order.  It wasn’t even high-summer in this country, but more of a transitional period between spring and summer.  Spring had brought flowers to drape the hills and a sea of weeds.  By now the flowers had wilted and the weeds were dry, bristly things prone to snagging every thread of someone’s clothing.  They dared the dry-lightning, careless smokers or even the heat in the air itself to set them ablaze. 

 

Supposedly, fire was one of the things that the great outer-wall of Flynn protected it from. 

 

The city was one of a handful that dotted this forsaken landscape.  The transports from more “civilized” areas only brought goods, services and people so far.  After the war, the people of the Divided States were allowed to live as they wished.  For the most part, that freedom resulted in the building of a series of odd little city-states.  Towns surrounded by formidable walls were nestled in the hills and over the plains.  Of course, the walls were never meant to defend the locals from Murrika’s people.  If war ever started up again, a good tank or bombs dropped from the sky could level any offending city. 

 

The walls were mainly a way to mark ownership and a way for the cities to defend against one-another.  The “outlier towns” rarely fought, but when they did, their people had limited weaponry.  The wasteland cities were built as the people of their original generations wished.  Most of them had cultures whereby the people retreated into and re-created lifestyles drawn from the past, only adopting such technology as was necessary to get basic work done.  Murrika carried some electronic devices with him, but knew they would be good only for writing and basic work, as there was no signal to connect to his world out here. 

 

Whitefeather, Cold Springs, Peridot… These were all interesting cities, and considered interesting places for the people of the civilized north to “slum” in, but Joe Murrika was interested in none of them for the time being.  He was a journalist and a general writer.  He was in the “backwater” country to fetch a story – or perhaps even a full-scale non-fiction book out of one walled city: The one that many people dreaded – Flynn.

 

Flynn was not known as a hostile place.  On the contrary, it had been peaceful since its creation (with only a few altercations through the decades with the city of Whitefeather).  However, many outsiders were superstitious about it for one reason – the very reason that Murrika was drawn there.  Beyond the outer wall, past the fields where the people kept their livestock, was an inner wall that was built and adorned with the bones of Flynn’s dead. 

 

Murrika had heard stories about the bone-wall and the class of people slated to build it.  He’d met others who had tried to tell their stories.  He never felt that they ever told the _whole_ story.  The young man wanted to know the people behind such a job – not in an aloof way, as his predecessors had reported, but in as personal a way as he could achieve.  He was not afraid to befriend “uncivilized” persons, if it came to that.  He wished to tell a bold, true rare story.  He did not wish to be “an anthropologist among apes.”

 

“I can smell myself,” the would-be recorder of tales complained as he reached one of the four main gates of Flynn.   Beads of moisture dribbled off his dark hair and down his face.  He blew his straight bangs away from his eyeglasses, which by now had a subtle coating of dust on their lenses. 

 

He startled back as he looked at the gate.  Apparently, skeletal décor was not reserved for only the inner wall.  There were staves, struck into the ground bearing thin, colorful flags.  There was also a pair of staves at either side of the gate with the skulls of large horses lashed to them, painted on the front with triangular symbols. 

 

Mr. Murrika asked the pair of armored people (a man and a woman) for entry and presented the appropriate paperwork.  The guards issued a cry to people he could not see.  The gates parted and he was let inside.  The most important thing was to let the people here know that he was not a threat.  It was also important to let them know that he carried money.  It happened that most of the cities in the Divided States used the currency issued by the Reunited States.  Some of the values assigned to the bills were different, but they were still circulated.  It was for convenience, perhaps.  Flynn was no exception. 

 

There were a few merchants by the gates.  Whether they gathered by the wall regularly or were just here in hopeful expectation of visitors from the bus-run, he would find out later.  Murrika flashed a pair of bills and was given a large pitcher of water.  What he didn’t slam down his sore throat he poured over his sweaty head, heedless of his suit.  He regretted it a moment later when he had to take his glasses off to see in blurs slightly less terrible than that produced by wet lenses.  An old man gave him a cloth to wipe them on – for an additional bill.

 

From there, Joe Murrika trekked down a narrow dirt-path past fields of crops and grazing beasts.  He came to a part of the inner wall that was unfinished – one of the “stops” where it presently ended.  He was tempted to touch it, but stopped out of respect. 

 

“These were people once,” he said to himself.  “And I do not know if anyone here has a taboo about touching the thing.”

 

He looked up when he heard a child’s laugh.  He startled as something with large wings jumped right off the end of the wall and landed before him. 

 

“Oh, hi Mister!” the girl said.  “I didn’t mean to frighten you!”

 

Murrika stared at a girl that looked about ten to twelve years old with messy hair and a pair of cardboard wings tied to her arms with twine.  The wings looked like they’d been cut from some very large box that had once held some kind of massive household appliance. 

 

“I’m alright,” he responded, smiling sheepishly.

 

Apparently satisfied, the girl ran off across one of the fallow fields with her “wings” spread out.  Mr. Murrika chuckled softly and ran a hand through his still-damp hair.  “I never though they’d let kids play on it,” he said.  He looked back at the wall to an interesting star-shaped design in the brown-gray concrete.  Someone’s skull stared back at him. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Questions were asked and directions are given.  The writer found himself walking down the slope of a hill, headed toward an area marked by ominous signs.  International symbols for hazards that had stood the test of time warned the un-initiated away. 

 

“Allo!” he shouted out, waving a hand in the air. 

 

A woman in a leather apron looked up from her work at a table.  Joe Murrika had tried to steel himself, “knowing what he was getting into,” but what he saw still sent a cold sensation of shock through his system. 

 

There she stood – the person he was meant to contact as the most able and willing to show him around.  Her eyes were worn, with faint wrinkles as their edges, her skin was as tan as buck’s hide, her sandy-gray hair was done in the longest ponytail he’d ever seen and her thick apron was spattered in fresh blood.  Older, equally dubious stains were worn into it.  She gripped a broad-bladed knife.  Other knives of various lengths and widths were stuck tip-first into the work table or were hung into a leather belt mounted to its side.  What rested upon the table, partially covered with a thick sheet, was something drawn from nightmares. 

 

It looked very much, Murrika decided, like something one would expect to see in a butcher-shop.  Flesh and bone, pink and deepening to dark red close to the bone.  The longest bones were well-stripped, showing a creamy color under the glisten of fluids.

 

A pair of smallish, scruffy dogs were gathered near, quiet, but rising up on their haunches, sniffing.  The woman laid her knife on the table and seemed to ignore Murrika.  She opened her other hand to the begging canines.  They sniffed and licked and bit little portions of something off her fingers.  Murrika looked back to what was exposed on the slab.  Though it resembled an animal carcass, the configuration of bones told him that he was looking at human remains. 

 

The little dogs licked the butcher’s hands clean.  Joe Murrika found a convenient bush to wander behind and threw up. 

 

“I wasn’t expecting you this soon,” the woman said, “or thought you would try to meet me here.  I hate it when outsiders catch me on the job.  Are you okay?” 

 

“Yeah,” Murrika answered, regaining his composure.  “I apologize for my rudeness.”

 

“I’m Korrina Crucia,” the woman answered.  “So you found the right person.  Mr. Mur- Murrika, if I am correct?”

 

“Yes,” Joe Murrika hastily nodded.  “I mean… I had a trek through the desert… and in this heat… Of course my stomach’s going to be a bit off…”

 

“Nah, this?” Crucia quipped.  “You’ll learn to take days hotter than this if you stick around for summer.  You don’t need to make excuses. Folks always get sick if they catch me having to do the worst of the work.  Lemme get cleaned up.  You should find your hotel.” 

 

The woman turned and called out down the slope.  “Sparky?  I’m trusting you to take ov-”

She marched herself to a chair that held a teenager.  She shook his shoulder and he looked up.  The scruffy-haired boy reluctantly removed his ear buds and turned off the music-player that rested in his shirt-pocket.   

 

“Sparky,” Crucia said gently.  The boy responded with what Murrika could describe only as a “Huh?” look.

 

“I need your help,” Crucia said.  “Can you finish up with Mr. Schlitz?” 

 

“Sure,” the kid answered.  “I thought you had the base-work handled.”  Sparky looked up.  “He’s here already?” 

 

Joe Murrika waved and smiled awkwardly.

 

 

 

 

 

After both parties had a chance to clean themselves up, Ms. Crucia met with Mr. Murrika.  She took him to an open-air restaurant.  Music from a live-band played.  The place was cordoned off with ropes and there was a sign by a ramshackle whitewashed counter depicting a running bull in burnished brass. The tables were simple and, as evening fell, lanterns hung by strings over the area were lit.  Strands of tiny, clear, electric lights also decorated the poles where the cordon-ropes were hung. 

 

The place looked fancy, but was a working-person’s eatery in the town of Flynn.  Joe Murrika winced at the menu when he saw it.  There were lots of weird meats, including animals that people in his country thought of as household pets – and at least one was a household pest.  

 

He ordered a salad with a light cream dressing and proceeded to pick at it uncomfortably with his fork.  The lady Crucia, on the other hand ordered a thick steak with accompaniments.  Murrika stared and poked at his not-quite dinner while watching her pour a spicy sauce over her hunk of meat and proceed to cut it and enjoy it.

 

“I don’t mean to sound rude,” he ventured, “but how can you?  After..?”

 

“You get used to certain things in my business,” she said. 

 

“Hmm,” he muttered.  “Well, I have read books with the old ‘sandwich at the autopsy table’ thing.  It’s just… I’m… pretty hungry, but not hungry…right now.” 

 

“Don’t force yourself for my sake,” Crucia answered.  “We’re supposed to get to know each other, anyway.  Talking is better than eating for that.  You must have some initial questions about me, mine, and what we do.”

 

Murrika cleared his throat as he rolled a fat little tomato to the side of his plate. “Why don’t you just bury people and dig up their bones later or use some kind of ossuary-system?” he asked.

 

“We only have a tiny amount of space within the city to do burials,” Crucia answered. “We need every scrap of farmland we can get and within the city is off-limits.  We have some fears about using the desert outside our gates.  Our soil doesn’t take well to the kind of decay-process we need to incorporate skeletons into the Sacred Wall.  We do try to do burials whenever we can.  Some families want their deceased incorporated right away.  That’s when those of us capable of doing the dirty-work you saw me at are slated to do it.” 

 

“I…lost it when I saw the dogs.” 

 

Crucia noticed his sad eyes and the way he was slumping in his chair. 

 

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “You shouldn’t have seen that.  Most of the soft remains are burned and scattered.   What I was doing was not customary.”

 

Murrika cringed.  “Then… why?”

 

The “Bonekeeper” sighed.  “The dogs… I’m actually trying to save their lives.  You see… people keep dogs as pets here.  The same as in your country, if I am correct.”

 

“Yes,” the man answered.  “We love dogs – generally speaking, of course.” 

 

“The strays, though, well… some here in Flynn have a taste for dog-meat.  It is also one of the least expensive kinds of protein you can get here.  This very place serves it by request.” 

 

Joe Murrika coughed and sputtered.  Yes, he had seen that on the menu.  Greens were definitely the right choice, he decided - Flynn might turn him into a vegetarian. 

 

“Relax,” Korrina Crucia soothed.  “You got a salad, remember?  And you haven’t even touched it.” 

 

“Okay, true enough.  I didn’t order any meat to wonder about,” the young man said, catching his breath.  “And if I did, well… I’m in a profession where I am supposed to try new things.”

 

“People are superstitious about the dogs, though,” the woman continued.  “If any of them eat human flesh, people take note of that… they take note of the dogs that hang around us Bonekeepers… no one wants to eat them.  People feel like they’re cannibals by-proxy if they do.  I don’t have the resources to adopt pets, so I help out the strays in my own way.  They’re almost-pets.  The way I see it, if someone’s demise after-the-fact can help keep other beings alive – why not?  I like our city’s wandering dogs.” 

 

Murrika took a tentative bite of lettuce.  He not only found that he kept it down without coughing, it enlivened his hunger.  He shoveled vegetables into his mouth and tore into the bread upon the table, smearing it with butter from a cream-crock. 

 

Crucia laughed gently.  “It is good that you found your appetite again,” she said.  “I worried that you might starve to death.” 

 

“This is… actually… pretty good bread.” 

 

“It’s mostly what I eat here,” Crucia confessed.  “It is not often I can spend money on a steak, but I felt that today was a special occasion.  I might have ordered donkey or horse if I was sure things would work out well.” 

 

“Donkey or horse…” Murrika trailed off.  “Those aren’t exactly luxury foods where I come from.”

 

“You have much to learn about Flynn,” Crucia answered. 

 

“And what’s with the ‘turning out well’ remark?  You don’t have confidence in me?”

 

“Few on the outside ever really ‘got’ us – especially us Bonekeepers.  Our own fellow citizens fail to understand us too well.  I don’t think we’ve ever been able to tell our story… without someone’s personal agenda getting in the way.” 

 

“I’m here to try to put an end to that.” 

 

“You’ll be meeting the others tomorrow.  The Lynch Sisters at the very least.  They do some of the finer clean-up… They keep insects and chemicals for the job.  They get the bones nice and hard so they might be a part of the wall for eternity.  The work is not beautiful, even as we try to create beauty from it. Death is never lovely, but we try to make lovely things from it.” 

 

“That is why I am here,” Murrika said.  “I want to see how it is done.  I want to see why it is done.” 

 

Crucia gulped down another piece of steak.  “Why?  You’re as silly as the rest.  The reason why is to make what remains in life and memory shine.”     
  
_______________________

 

**End Chapter 1 of ?**


	2. Chapter 2

**The Bonekeepers’** **Union**

**Chapter 2**

 

 

**_Joseph Murrika – Log.  First Day Post-Arrival:_ **

_The wallpaper in my hotel suite has disturbing stains on it.  I didn’t choose the highest-end of hotels, but I didn’t choose the cheapest in town, either.  I don’t want to know what the rooms in the cheap inns look like.  The bed sheets and covers at least looked clean, not that it would have mattered to me in the exhausted state I was in last night._

_It must have been the desert that did me in, because I don’t have a habit of drinking.  Mrs. Korrina Crucia warned me that we would be meeting a pair of young women who could drink the toughest men in Flynn under the table should I want to take on a challenge._

_Meeting the pair today almost made me want to take up drinking, or, alternately, to seek out medical attention for possible damage to my heart._

 

 

 

The door to the out-building opened and Joe Murrika was greeted by a strange, elongated face.  He jumped back and his guide laughed.  She slapped him on the back.

 

“It’s just a mask,” Korrina Crucia assured.  “The Lynch Sisters wear them to keep from being known.” 

 

“They aren’t some kind of precaution or sanitation thing?” Murrika asked as he entered the warehouse.  He saw the twin of the person who’d opened the door, also wearing a whitewashed wooden mask.  The masks resembled something equine – they looked like animal skulls of some sort, but they were far too smooth to be real bone and had perfectly round eye-sockets, betraying their false nature.  Reverberating throughout the vast room was a sound that made Murrika feel itchy.  It was a crawling kind of sound.  The floor had doors in it – massive brown-painted metal doors that mounted into a concrete edging.  There were handles on the inner sections.  The masked sisters demonstrated how they worked.

 

“The insect-pit,” one of them said.  “Jaye, get the poles.” 

 

One of the women grabbed a long stave with a curved metal end.  Murrika thought it looked like a spear, but it was blunt enough to make for poor use in combat.  She handed another one to her compatriot.  Together, they hooked their pikes into the handles on one of the doors and pulled back, sliding the door open on a track.  Inside was a sea of beetles experiencing every stage of their lives.  There were compact little adults climbing through sawdust and castings and all over one another, little squirming larvae and chaff-like pupa bobbing in among their parents and siblings. 

 

The smell was nearly overpowering to Joe Murrika.  _That_ was the smell his nose had caught when he’d first stepped in. There were simple, screened ventilation ducts inside the sides of the pit, which must have, he’d guessed, led out into the divots in floor around it.  The open pit, however, let all of its aromas free in full-force.  It was an earthy smell, a gummy smell – a unique, otherwise indescribable stench of thousands of insects gathered in a space the size of an average family swimming pool.  Ragged ribs stood out from the writhing gray and brown.  The ribcage-section was far too large to have originated in a human, unless, of course, the lands around Flynn held giants Murrika had never known about. 

 

“We’ve got a horse in there,” one of the masked women said.  “He was a beloved animal and we were requested to work with him.” 

 

“You incorporate animals into the Wall?” Murrika asked.  He had not seen anything clearly animal in the parts of it he’d so far seen.  In hindsight, he decided that some of what he had viewed could have come from animals.   

 

“Not often,” Crucia answered.  “There are several sections ‘round the bend we can show you where the dead choose not to part with their pets or where animals otherwise become a part of the design. My client from yesterday is being handled here.  I think he is a bit too buried to see… Ah!”

 

She pointed to a bit of human radius and ulna visible among the swarm. 

 

“Yeah, I see,” the young writer answered, taking a deep breath.  The Lynch Sisters slid the heavy door closed again after taking a reed broom to brush strays back into the pit.

 

“I don’t think we’ve really had a proper introduction,” Murrika said politely after regaining his breath.

 

“Meryl,” one of the masked women said, extending a hand from beneath the cloak she wore. 

 

“Jaye,” said the other, shrugging her shoulders. 

 

“And no,” Meryl continued, “You are not going to see our faces. It is not just because you are an outsider, I assure you.”

 

“No one in Flynn sees our faces,” Jaye interrupted.  “No one but our fellow Bonekeepers.”

 

“Unlike me,” Korrina Crucia elaborated, “These dear sisters care about appearances.  I do not mind the way I am seen in town.  They enjoy socializing in their off-time.  It is difficult for people of our profession to get dates.”

 

“We suspect some of the establishments would turn us away, as well,” Jaye said. 

 

“The stigma of being a Bonekepeer can be pretty sharp,” Crucia explained as the Lynches took Murrika to another part of the warehouse, the place where they kept their chemicals and patinas to harden and color bones.  “It is a job only for those who can do nothing else – something that only the poorest of us do, usually.  Some of us are pushed into it by our families.  A few of us choose it for our own reasons.”

 

“Hmmm,” Murrika muttered, clearing his throat. 

 

Meryl pointed to stacks of bones of various kinds – stacked femurs, a large earthen bowl with skulls.  They all had tags affixed to them, carefully catalogued.  “These are those that did not have requests to be incorporated right away.  We keep a careful record of all of their names, birthdates, death-dates and various other information.

 

“It is a bit shocking,” the writer admitted.  He took down a few notes in a pad he’d carried in with him. 

 

Jaye spoke up.  “It is better than what was done in some of the historical catacombs and churches in other parts of the world – the record-keeping, I mean.  The oldest section of the wall isn’t on record.”  - She went to a desk holding an enormous book.  She opened it, scattering dust in the wake of its heavy pages.  It reminded Joe Murrika of a wedding-guest registry. 

 

“We keep records here,” she continued, “and on the tags.  We treat our clients like some might treat a scientific collection.  “There are other projects around the world very like our Sacred Wall and born from similar problems… Overflowing graveyards needing excavation and so forth.  Our wall was begun after the last great war as a way to honor the unburied dead and our forebears just continued on with it.  Our predecessors could not keep a record of the war-dead, but since then, the Bonekeepers have kept everyone’s names.”

 

“So, how deep does the stigma go?” Murrika asked innocently. 

 

“Oh, quite a bit,” Crucia said sadly.  “It’s not just that it is job that pays a minimum, it is a job that bars us from taking on any other jobs.  Our work with the dead – though it is considered important – is also considered to be corrupting.”

 

“Corrupting?”

 

“In a spiritual sense,” Crucia explained.  “We’re on one end honored for being the people who take care of the dead and their memory.  On the other end, the very… gritty… work we do to upkeep the aesthetics of the Wall lead us to be feared.”

 

“I have to admit,” Murrika muttered, turning to Crucia, “You did look frightening when I came upon you… with the knives and the apron.” 

 

“We’re considered tainted,” Jaye said.  “We are seen as a people of poor luck.  No one wants to risk having children with a Bonekeeper, because the future is almost always written for the offspring.  Our leader, Ms. Tara Stone, is a third-generation Bonekeeper. She could be nothing else.  People think of us as ‘bringing the specter of death’ with us wherever we go.”

 

“Some of the others don’t think we even have souls,” Meryl groused. 

 

“Really?” Murrika asked, appalled. 

 

“According to our local legends,” Crucia explained, “those of us who handle the dead and build the Wall are barred from the Heavens.  We are, by default, slated to encounter a less pleasant form of an afterlife. We don’t exactly believe in a place of torment like in the older legends, but the Darklands are not favored among believers who live in Flynn.” 

 

“We are,” Jaye added, “tainted… and no tainted thing can enter a realm of purity.”

 

“At least the Darklands are mostly ‘merely dull,” Meryl said.  “It is said that they are gray, with cracked, dry ground where unworthy souls wander forever.  Some think the place has rivers of blood and castles of bone, too.  I’d say it suits us Bonekeepers just fine.”

 

“Personally, I look forward to such a place,” Crucia said.  “If all of the people who think they are better than us end up in the Heavens, I’d rather wander in the gray than share another life with them, even in the nicest of settings.”

 

“Well, you will know where you’re headed to when you see the bony kitties,” Jaye mused.

 

“Bony kitties?” Murrika asked as he exited the warehouse with the women and walked along the dirt cart-trail that lead between it and the Sacred Wall. 

 

“The Seraphilines,” Crucia began with a small nod, “They are guides for the dead.  They are only supposed to be seen by the dying.  According to deathbed stories, they look like the skeletons of cats with wings and feathered tails.” 

 

“Sounds pretty spooky to me,” Murrika mused.  “No offense.”

 

“None taken,” his guide assured.  “They are supposed to be spooky.  All of us who are keepers of death are spooky.  The Seraphilines supposedly take people to both the Darklands and the Heavens, by the way.  Of course, there is an additional tale about a full-fleshed, full-furred normal-looking black and white cat that acts as a sarcastic companion to earthbound ghosts.  I don’t know too many people other than children who believe in her, though.”

 

“Interesting,” Joe Murrika said, scribbling in his notebook, refraining to speak of how all of these folk-beliefs sounded far-fetched to him.  He inwardly reminded himself that he was an outsider and that some of the common beliefs and other things that were given casual nods in his own culture would surely seem far-fetched or silly to the people here.  He smiled, thinking; _Why not companions in the moment of death?  Why not?_

 

The little group of the woman with the long ponytail, the journalist and the two masked bone-cleaners came up toward a small group of people gathered around a kitchen table in the middle of a dusty, dry-grass field. 

 

“Tone down the mythology!” one young man complained to another, older man.  They were both standing up, beyond the table.   

 

A woman with short hair and gold-colored dangly earrings was seated at the table, scrawling with a pencil on some large sheets of paper, weighted down by her other hand and a ruler. 

 

The young man who had voiced the exasperated complaint was rather strange-looking in Murrika’s opinion.  He had long hair, maroon in color, and was wearing a headband that had a deer-antler sticking up from it.  he was an adult, but boyish, and Murrika did not know how he had correctly guessed his gender, as he would be informed of later.  The man being complained to was significantly older, had darkish skin and was holding papers in his hands – a written speech, apparently, given the discussion.      

 

“What else am I to say?” the speechwriter replied.  “His family is one with a desire after Heaven.  I know them.  These words are a comfort.”

 

“Suppose someone is in doubt,” the young man with the antler said.  “If even one of them isn’t feeling so sure, your ‘comfort’ may just hurt them more.  You should just focus on the life he lived that is known to all of us.”

 

“I do wish to give hope to those who have requested it.”

 

“You know how I feel about false hope.” 

 

Crucia turned to Murrika.  “The older gentleman is our John Guile.  He does some of the design-work on the wall and what he’s doing now is practice for a ceremony.” 

 

“A funeral?”  Murrika asked, in turn. 

 

“Not entirely,” Crucia answered.  “People do their own private funerals.  We just do something extra when bones are incorporated, particularly when the request is registered.  Our ceremony functions as a kind of second-funeral.” 

 

“The young stag seems a little upset.” 

 

“Oh, not really,” she replied.  “Those two just like to argue.  You see, Mr. Guile is the most devout of us regarding our temple and is the best-educated in its matters.  Axxel Hatcher there is the one among us ‘devout’ in a stance of non-belief.”

 

“So, they fight often,” Joe Murrika concluded.  “It is that way in my country.”

 

“On the contrary!” Crucia said brightly, “They are the best of friends.”

 

“Really?”

 

“They are almost always together, even without work to be done.  They disagree on some things, but are rarely unfriendly.  They share a love of justice that surpasses the details.” 

 

“Ah, ha,” Murrika said, clearing his throat.

 

John Guile laughed.  “Alright, alright,” he said to his acquaintance, “The speech does seem a little pushy.  I doubt Mr. Schlitz is greatly concerned about his place in the next level.  He probably would want us sticking with the known.  However, if any of the relatives wish to speak with me privately, I will be free with them about what I hope in.”

 

“Fair enough,” the young man with the odd hair sighed. 

 

Crucia urged Murrika forward to speak with the woman at the inexplicable table.  She rose from her seat and shook his hand. 

 

“Hello,” she said.  “Tara Stone, Project Head.  Pleased to meet you.” 

 

“Joseph Murrika, Outlier Chronicle. I hope that I wasn’t interrupting anything important.  I’ve met Miss Crucia and the Lynches, and got to see… um… first-hand… what they do.”

 

“Oh, come walk,” Stone beckoned, motioning for Crucia to join them.  They left the two men to fuss and bother over the finer details of the ceremonial speech and the Lynches to take a rest at the table.  Joe Murrika, Korrina Crucia and Tara Stone descended a soft hill until they found themselves standing before the imposing tallness of a section of Flynn’s infamous inner wall.   “The construction-sections are over there,” she said, pointing down the arc to a distant unfinished area.  I was drawing some plans with Guile.  That’s most of what we do,” she nodded to Murrika, “Flynn is a relatively small city and we don’t have a particularly high death-rate.  The elderly here are tough old birds and we don’t often have outbreaks of violence.”

 

“Good to know,” Murrika muttered.

 

“We get some thefts sometimes,” Crucia said, walking beside him as Stone took the lead along the foot-path of dead and dying grass running at the wall’s edge. Murrika looked down, noticing how much it resembled a game trail.  “Murder is rare, but it has happened. The same with accidents.” 

 

“My little sister is a part of the wall over yonder,” Stone said respectfully, pointing to a portion of the wall where the incorporations were not able to be seen.  A shadow was cast by the curve.  “The victim of an accident.  Everyone else had to take care of her for me.”

 

“We did a burial for a year first, and then the Lynchs’ bugs,” Crucia explained.  “As little space as we have for it in good ground, we Bonekeepers are allowed that much for our own and our families for the sake of distancing ourselves with salve of time.  Our line of work has made us all lose our minds a bit, so we try not to press it when we can.”

 

“I do need to know all of the methods,” Murrika said.  He looked up at the portions of wall they were passing.  There were full skeletons here and there, some capering with the bones of animals, some dancing together.  There were areas where separated bones had been arranged in patterns, stars, circles, and various abstract designs – the remains of several different bodies.  There were designs etched into the wall and made into bass-relief to accentuate the hardened bones and skulls. 

 

“Okay, so some go in as full skeletons and others are all done up at your discretion?”

 

“Indeed,” Stone replied, nodding her head and adjusting her eyeglasses.  “Not all people request in their wills or are requested by their families to ‘take the spotlight,’ as it were.  Some would rather mingle with their neighbors, family and assorted ancestors.  We are allowed freedom in creating art.  We do our best to give dignity to all.”

 

“I’ll say!”  Murrika said, looking up at intricate work with skulls and femurs interspersed with relief-artwork of laurels and swirls representing wind.  “It’s… creepy… I won’t lie… but it is beautiful.” 

 

Korrina Crucia patted him on the shoulder.  “So, you wouldn’t mind this kind of thing being done with you?”

 

“Not at all.  My father probably would be agitated if it was done to me, but I wouldn’t mind.  It actually seems like a better fate than to be put into the ground and forgotten.” 

 

“Oh, they are still forgotten,” Crucia said sardonically.  “No one living knows the names of the jumbled war-dead in the oldest part of the wall.  Those that have come after them are only remembered so long as their families, friends and associates are able to.  In the end, they all become pretty – but anonymous – bones.”

 

“Still!” Joe Murrika insisted, “They are art!”

 

“That they are,” Crucia replied with a smile.  Ms. Stone was smiling, too.  The chain on her eyeglasses swayed slightly, as did her dangly earrings.   

 

They came to a highly-decorated pillar.  The top of it jutted up from the edge of the wall.  On their side of it was a single skeleton.  Some of the bronze-colored bones protruded slightly from wall’s mortar.  The skull looked skyward, the arms were out and the legs were posed in a lift-off position.  Over the pillar were objects that looked like the wing-bones of birds, treated the same as remains of the man.  (The narrow pelvis told Joe Murrika that the subject was a male – he knew at least that much about human anatomy).  In relief around the wing-bones were sculpted feathers, and beyond those feathers, relief that resembled symbolic flames. 

 

Murrika marveled at it, but he had one question. “The wings…. Those are highly irregular.  Where did you get those?”

 

“Korrina hunts birds sometimes,” Tara Stone explained.  “She sometimes brings down large geese with a bow and arrow.  They were supplemented with a bit of sculpting.” 

 

“It’s supplemental food… for when the stipend we get from the city doesn’t quite cover everything we need.  Every once in a while, I hit something big enough that we can play around with sculpting around it.  I saved those wings for a long while…. This incorporation is… special.” 

 

Murrika noticed the sadness that laced her voice.  He ventured, cautiously.  “Someone you know?” 

 

“The big pillars are former Bonekeepers,” Stone explained.  “This man was the last of us that we said goodbye to.  If you had come to see us two years ago, you would have been able to meet him.”  Stone stood by the pillar and gave a little curtsey, making a flourish-gesture with her arm and hand.  “Mr. Joe Murrika, meet our dear, departed Anthony Stake.”

 

The writer bowed his head in respect. 

 

“He was a fellow design-head,” Crucia explained.  “He worked closely with Tara here.”

 

“I am sorry.”

 

“It is alright,” she answered.  “We all still miss him, but time has a way of healing.” 

 

“He’s done up like a myth,” Murrika observed. “Are the rest of your predecessors portrayed as angels?”

 

“No, just him,” Tara Stone said.  “Stake was a man of lofty ideals and strong emotions.  We all found him to be ‘touched by fire’ to coin a phrase.  We also think that he would have liked this set-up.”

 

“Was he young?” Murrika asked.  “Something about the bones looks… young.”

 

“His birthday was three years before mine,” Stone said.  “Our job and our life here got to him.” 

 

“Hmm?” Murrika grunted in nervous way.  “Oh, I didn’t mean to reopen any old wounds.”

 

“Nah, people should know,” Stone said.  “Your investigation of us Bonekeepers would be incomplete without his spirit, with it still being as much a part of us as it is.  He was a hero of-sorts once, too… but it did not save him.”

 

Murrika walked up to the pillar and gently ran his fingers over one of the skeleton’s feet.

 

“I’ll tell you the story of how I got my little silver tabby cat that I have at home,” Stone began. 

 

“A story about how you got your cat?” Murrika asked. 

 

“He belonged to Anthony as a kitten before he became mine.  I can think of no better way to deliver a sad story than to have it delivered by a cat.”       

      


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: This chapter involves suicide. All have been warned.

**The Bonekeepers’** **Union**

**Chapter 3**

**_Have I created enough beauty in you since we’ve been together? Have there been enough memories that I have left with you that I can be free to go and to explore the place beyond that fearful, sacred door?  May I rest or do you still need more from me?  Is there enough of me in you that you can take what you’ve been given and let me go?_ **

****

**_Every life leaves other lives with a tender kiss and a brutal scar. If it is a successful life, it will leave the kisses upon the journey, and the scar upon departure rather than tyrant’s way, upon which the departure brings rejoicing._ **

****

**_I hate to leave a scar on you.  Hopefully, it means I have given you many tender kisses._ **

 

 

**_Joseph Murrika – Log.  First Week Post- Arrival:_ **

_The sky looks like steel today.  The rain is falling like bullets, each drop thick, heavy and cold.  I have retreated to my suite to wait out the day.  There is something strange I’ve noticed about the sky here, in Flynn and the land around it:  The sky never seems to be blue here.  When the sky was clear on the day I arrived, it had a reddish cast.  I attributed that to the dust.  The next day, it blended into an orange-haze and stayed that way beyond sunrise.  Today, the sky is gray with clouds that seem as heavy as lead._

_It seems appropriate weather to record some of the sadder stories of the lives of the Bonekeepers of Flynn._

_From my hotel window, I can see a section of the gray inner wall.  Water is pouring off it in sheets._

 

 

 

Anthony Stake stared at a box of unwanted things.  They squeaked and mewled and pawed the edges of their cardboard confines, showing all of their instincts for being adorable and endearing themselves to greater creatures.  They were cast-offs nonetheless, lives that were inconvenient to the care they were born into.   

 

“Sir?” the little boy sitting beside the box outside the storefront said, “They’re free and they’re all pretty healthy.  I’d keep them all, but Mom won’t let me.” 

 

Stake smiled and picked up one of the kittens out of the box.  He stroked its soft, fuzzy fur.  He noted that it was a silver tabby as far as color went, but couldn’t place the breed, which was more than likely to be mixed.  It also appeared to be a male.  As he prodded and coddled it, examining its features, the kitten looked at him like he was an idiot.

 

It was love at first sight. 

 

“I think I can handle a pet,” the man said.  “I guess I’ll take him.  I hope you find good homes for the rest.” 

 

The child saw him off as he entered the store, trying to ignore the people in it who were glaring at him because they knew who he was and what he did for a living.  He stashed the kitten in a hand-basket he grabbed from a stack.  Anthony Stake had come into town to get a few basic groceries.  It looked like he’d be picking up some cat-supplies, too. 

 

 

 

 

He stopped by one of the work-places before heading home.  It was the setup the Bonekeepers had near to the Fire Gate – one of the gates that their ancestors recorded should be built into the Sacred Wall.   The relatively slow rate of progress upon the Wall meant that there were only two of these gates so far.  The Dark Gate lay on the West end of the wall outside of Flynn.  Although the Sacred Wall was never meant to be a fortification, there was the thought firmly planted in the minds of the populace that it may need to serve that purpose someday, should the outer “war wall” fail.  The gate-doors were cast-iron and the gate arches were decorated as the rest of the walls. 

 

Children, generally, did not like the Dark Gate.  Visiting outsiders thought that it looked quite evil, more so than the rest of a grand wall created from the remains of the dead.  It was flanked by a pair of ram’s skulls with long, curling horns and they had been treated with an agent that had not only strengthened them, but had turned them black.  The Fire Gate had the skulls of bulls treated in a similar manner (though they took on a copper color in the sunlight), but most people thought that cattle looked far less wicked in death than sheep and goats for some reason.

 

John Guile said that it had to do with ancient legends, old stories that most had forgotten.  “Symbols can stay in the collective psyche long after the sources have vanished,” he’d said. 

 

The Fire Gate, of course, had a motif of flames.  Stake had worked on the design himself.  When a lengthy enough section of the wall was built up, it would be time to work upon the Air Gate.  The Light Gate, planned for the East end, was nothing the current crop of Bonekeepers expected to begin work on in their lifetimes, to say nothing of the Earth Gate and the Water Gate. 

 

The latest edge of the Fire Gate was being built up with random, ancestral bones – the remains of people without so much ego or concerned family that they needed to be put in the wall whole.  Anthony Stake liked working with those bones.  It allowed the crew to be creative.  He surveyed the work as he set his shopping basket down.  He did not notice when the kitten clambered out of it. 

 

“Hey!” he called to Tara Stone, his fellow Project Head and general designer. 

 

“Yeah?” she called back, wrapping a cloak around her body.  Her hair would have been whipping around everywhere, too, if she hadn’t recently cut it.  As it was, her cloak made her look like hero.  Stake could have illustrated her for a book. 

 

“Thought you were taking the day off to run errands!” she shouted past the wind. 

 

“I was!  I just wanted to come by for the company!” Stake responded.  “And to show you my new little buddy!” 

 

Stake looked down at his basket of bread, fruit and a strand of sausages, one of which was half-eaten. 

 

“Ah, no, where did he get off to?” 

 

“Is that him?”

 

Stone pointed to the large butcher-table that was a part of the group’s set-up as she wandered to a small silver-furred form upon it.  To Anthony Stake’s horror, the kitten was chewing on something.  The wooden table-top was slicked with new blood, hastily swabbed down with water.  No amount of water took care of every stain.    

 

“Paladin!” Stake scolded.  He grabbed the cat off the table and ripped the bit of gristle it was chewing away from the animal.  He did not mind this kind of thing for Crucia’s homeless dogs, but this was not for a cat in his keeping. 

 

Tara Stone laughed as her friend took the kitten into his hands.  “Don’t worry!” she said.  “You know that we have no recent clients.  Korrina and Sparky were handling a goat – a beloved pet.  The owner demanded a swift place for her and rendered a swift payment, so onto the block she went.  They’re going to tan the skin for the guy, too, make a throw-blanket.” 

 

“A…goat?” 

 

“As in goat stew, though that one will not be served as such.  Your cat remains untainted by human flesh – if such a thing is actually tainting.  Where’d you get him?” 

 

“The grocer’s,” Stake replied.  “No, they haven’t started selling pets there.  I just found a kid with a box of cast-offs.” 

 

Stone took the kitten from him.  “Cute,” she said, inspecting the feline.  “He can attack your feet on lonely nights.” 

 

“They wouldn’t be so lonely if we met a little more often.”

 

“I’m not ready to attack your feet…. Or anything else.” 

 

“I know that,” Stake said, taking the cat back, “but walks through town might be nice.  Or cooking you dinner every once in a while.  I wouldn’t mind that, really.” 

 

“I take it the cat has a name, since you called out one.”

 

“Paladin.”

 

“How gallant.” 

 

Stake shaded his eyes with one hand as he cradled his pet and saw an advancing soft wall of brown enveloping the distant mountains at an alarming rate.  It was not surprising that this would happen with the high winds. “Is that a wall of dust coming our way?”

 

Stone mimicked Stake’s gesture.  “I do believe it is.” 

 

“Nearest barn, duck and cover!”

 

 

 

 

 

The Bonekeepers worked with many kinds of people and saw the aftermath of many kinds of death.  At least, they worked with anything that left the bones intact or broken only minimally. 

 

Anthony Stake truly hated the suicides.  He bore no ill will toward the people, themselves or their memory, he just hated the fact that they seemed to whisper to him from beyond flesh, bone, ashes and dust; _“Join us.”_

 

He contemplated the cleaned and tagged skeleton of a young woman with one cracked vertebra.  Stone and he wanted to do something special with her, but had gotten no direction from her kin.  At this point, it was almost as if they had forgotten her.   Perhaps it was for their own good to put the pain away.  The Bonekeepers might well be monstrous for bringing the bones to light.  This was Flynn’s tradition, however, to honor her as they did everyone else.  The skeleton was the right size for what the wall needed and this was the right time.  

 

Stake also hated when people died at the age of eighteen – or earlier – regardless of the cause.  Some families outright asked for this, that and the other thing while some were too stricken to ask for anything and this was a case of the latter.  The body had gone through burial and beetles five years ago, the bones long kept in storage, according to the dated tags.  Stake had not known her at all, but remembered her face when Guile and Axxel had brought her in.  It was a vague recollection.

 

Stake hated the suicides particularly because they always seemed like the last people who should die early.  They made him wonder why he was still around – a man with no family.  If people who were well-loved and had futures took that end to their roads, what hope was there for him?  If they could not be saved, could he?  Keeping dark impulses in check was a fight.  He didn’t need a skull silently whispering for him to follow it. 

 

The Bonekeepers talked and sketched as they looked over the box of bones. The entire group liked the idea of giving this skeleton false wings for some reason.  Stake also proposed the addition of chains to the arm-bones and the idea of making them look like they were holding down the wings.  When Korrina Crucia told him that this motif struck her as cruel, he replied that he sensed that this was what the girl had probably felt during the last days of her life – chained by circumstances, chained down to the world.  There was argument about simply placing the skull and the femurs into a broader design with others.  Stake kept insisting that chain-like sculptures be involved. 

 

The day’s design contemplation and heated debates left Anthony drained.  He came to his lonely home that was now less lonely for the presence of a small cat.  All the same, after feeding Paladin, he took a walk in the open desert as he often did, past the main “war wall” gates and their guards.  In the middle of the night, the full moon lit the land, painting ghosts and shadows out of the stones and scraggly trees.  The heat of the day radiated off the hardpan, kissed by the cooling air. 

 

Stake wondered if the gray land was what the Darklands that people like him were to go to after death were like.  In fact, he wondered, for just a moment, if he had died and arrived there.  He opened his arms and ran headlong over the hills.  He welcomed the idea of being in this lonely land forever, dreaming beneath the moon.  The horizon held a deeper darkness and the sky was a void.  A few stars marked it, but Anthony Stake sensed the void beyond.  Maybe that was his destination and he just had to keep on running to get there. 

 

He looked back over the distant outer wall of the city of Flynn and turned back.  He wasn’t ready to leave his friends and his city – not yet.      

 

 

 

 

 

Anthony Stake had not always been a Bonekeeper.  He’d started out with a rather mundane childhood, though one without a steady father.  His father had died when he was around two years old, and although his mother had dated some, no relationship ever stuck.  She and his older brother chose to leave Flynn when he was eighteen to seek a new life somewhere in the Re-United States.  He chose to stay.  In hindsight, he wondered if it was a mistake every day.  His mother did not force him into joining the Bonekeepers.  Some families did that with their “disposable” children.  On the contrary, he sought his own path and worked many interesting jobs along its way.

 

He’d worked for a bank once, briefly, which was why he had a habit of wearing a suit at almost all times, at least at any time he was not required to do especially messy work.  Sometimes, even then, too.  He’d gotten a spot of mortar on a sleeve once.  Stake constantly repaired the thing, for he could not afford much in the way of new, fancy things on a Bonekeeper’s regular salary.  The bonuses that came from the people that thanked them for caring for the dead were far-between and tended to go toward repairs on the home.  Besides, Stake’s one suit was his bank-suit.  It reminded him of better times, a fleeting period in his life when he was respected. 

 

He never knew why he was let go from that job.  He was told that there was a budget-issue and since he was the new guy, his termination had made the best sense.  He suspected that it was because he’d fudged the rules a little on appointing a loan for a desperate person.  Anthony Stake was often accused of letting his heart override his head. 

 

Taking up a position as a Bonekeeper had been an act born of starvation.  When his failed job-bids had ended in him coming home to nothing but a half-empty jar of mayonnaise and crackers in the refrigerator, he realized his desperation – especially when the refrigerator-light flickered off as the power went out.  Although he had other clothes, he kept the suit and refused to sell it.  And so, Tony Stake took a job that was simultaneously reviled and revered, but always open to all comers.  It was steady.  To become a Bonekeeper meant that one was in that position for life.  The pay was paltry, but reliable and tended to cover basic needs.  There was even an oddball housing program:  Bonekeepers were entitled to live in the houses of their predecessors, those either departed for worlds outside of the city, or those departed for other worlds entirely.  Fixing things up and keeping up with what modern bits and pieces the culture of Flynn adopted, however, was entirely on the individual, but there was, at least, basic shelter. 

 

He had more than crackers and yellowing condiments in his fridge now.  In fact, some of the farmers occasionally thanked the Bonekeepers’ group with a calf or a lamb that was not meant to accompany a human in the Sacred Wall.  It seemed to be a Bonekeeper’s lot in life to be about the meat and the bone.  Those that grew fruit around the area were not often so generous.  

 

The man thought about it all as he put a leftover beef-shank into a stewpot on the stove to make something he could share with his cat and otherwise store up in jars.  Stake was an expert at making soups and stews.  He was approaching middle-age and had yet to find a wife, so he cooked entirely for himself.  Sharing, even with a pet, was an experience he hadn’t had in a long time.  He’d offered invitations to dinner to Tara Stone many times.  Like him, she was the introverted-type, but even more so than he was.  She was older than he was by a few years, but didn’t date.  She had been at the job longer than he had been and had settled into what they called the “Bonekeeper’s Apathy.”  The Bonekeepers dealt so much with death that life inevitably started becoming a shadow.  Tara was also terrified of creating children.  Stake knew that she liked him, but purposefully kept him at a distance just because of that.  Their kind of life would not be fair to any offspring.  Tara knew this better than anyone.  She was a third-generation Bonekeeper.  Her own family legacy had doomed her from the start. 

 

After setting the bone to simmer, Stake hunted up some bread, beef and mustard for himself and pulled some meat out of the refrigerator and tore a bit off for the cat.  He let Paladin eat right on top of his table as he piled cloves of pickled garlic from a jar onto his sandwich.  He didn’t trust the tinned cat-food.  He worried that the stuff at the grocer’s might have been made, in part, from Paladin’s own kind.  It wasn’t like they got a lot of fish into a desert-city, although there was a river nearby that was more sizable than it had been historically because some of the ancient dams had breached.  There was one left upriver that powered the town.   

 

“Hey, cat!” Anthony said while poking the kitten in the nose.  “I hope I didn’t make a mistake in taking you in.  You’d better turn out to be a good mouser.” 

 

Paladin continued to gnaw at shredded roast beef, pulling it off its plate.  Stake ran his finger down the kitten’s spine, eliciting a cute little arch of pleasure, but the kitten didn’t look up from his intense eating.   

 

“Cute.  But you’ll get big.  You’ll grow out of cute.  You stand to be right-pretty… nice fur-pattern.  Say, cat, do you know answers to some of my questions?  Why _do_ we care for each other when we are constantly changing?  If I take care of you right, you’ll be an old cat someday, fat as a melon and then skinny as a rail, going from purring at me to yowling at mice that only you can see, won’t you?  Happened with the last cat I had.  Happens to a lot of people, too – well, maybe not yowling and maybe not imaginary mice, but becoming shadows of themselves, you know what I mean.”

 

The cat looked up from his meal and just looked at him.   

 

“And everyone goes to the Wall, too.  I’ll set you up a nice place there.  You can be a Serephiline.  We need some more of those in the designs.  Tell me, cat, why do we risk love when we know that each and every one of us eventually fades away?” 

 

Paladin went back to eating. 

 

“Eat and drink while ye may,” Tony Stake said, lifting up his sandwich.  “A fine philosophy, my friend.” 

 

 

 

 

The cicadas created a buzz, low and loud, rising in pitch and intensity at intervals.  The gnats and mosquitoes were unbearable.  Even on an overcast day, they were thick around the banks of the river.  Anthony Stake wiped the sweat from his brow as he walked along in the weeds with Tara Stone. 

 

“Why in the world did you wear that suit down here?” she asked, sweat glistening on her shoulders and soaking into the straps of her sleeveless top.  “I didn’t say anything before because, technically, you can hold a fishing pole in your hands in anything, but… wow!”

 

Stake took a slug of water from a canteen.  “I’ll be fine.  I feel kind of naked without the thing, okay?” 

 

“There’s having a look and then there’s taking it too far.  You could always grow your hair out long and wear a mile-long ponytail like Korrina or strap an antler to your head like Axxel if you insist upon being insane.”    

 

Stake laughed softly.  “We all have some quirks, don’t we?” 

 

Stone shrugged, investigating a sandbar.  “Trust me, darlin’, we’re probably the tamest batch of Bonekeepers that ever were, given my parents and their friends.  We all cling to weird little things.  We go a little mad to keep from going a lot mad in this hard old world.” 

 

A group of children were swimming and playing in the shallows.  A few of them were swimming out toward the river’s center, the pale sun glinting off their skin in various shades of brown.  Most of them were boys, but there were a pair of girls, about seven kids in all.  All were young and Stake and Stone looked at each other, the silent glance between them said “Where are the parents?” 

 

A man in a straw hat with a fishing pole on the bank down-river waved from a creaky patio-chair, cans of one beverage or another in a neat pack beside him.   

 

Stake put a piece of cheese on a fishhook as he watched one of the girls and one of the boys play keep-away with one of the other boys’ swim-trunks.  There was much shrill yelling.  The wind picked up and he looked upriver.  The sky had been overcast all day, with ragged clouds that threatened rain, but many days were like this in and outside of Flynn.  A sky pregnant with rain left the dry land unfulfilled.  Something was different about the sky up ahead, though.  The clouds were brushed with strokes that told the observer that the mountains were getting a downpour of epic proportions. 

 

Stone dropped her fishing pole and looked at him.  They had both heard it – a subtle roar. 

 

“KIDS!” Stone called.  “Everyone out!” 

 

Stake watched in horror as the brown muddy wall of a flash flood came barreling down towards them, the bankside trees bending and breaking it its wake.  The children were running, including the naked boy, his shorts forgotten.  One little girl didn’t make it.  The pounding wave swept her away. 

 

Anthony Stake didn’t even yelp or remove his coat.  He ran into the river and dove right down in just as the wave crashed.  He grabbed the child and shielded her with his body.  He could feel rocks dig into his back through the suit-coat.  He tumbled and broke the surface, gasping for air.  The girl clung to him, using his shoulders as leverage to heft herself up and take a breath.  They continued to drift, water crashing over them, denying their air and filling their mouths with grit.  With a trembling arm, Stake managed to grab onto a submerged boulder that he’d narrowly missed breaking a leg on.  It slammed into his knee sending sparks of white-hot agony into his brain – it was then that he thought to reach out to it as a handhold. 

 

Tara called to him as well as the gaggle of children and the old man in the straw hat.  He wedged his sore knee into the mud and awkwardly passed the child in his arms onto the bank.  He moved through the rushing waters, feeling as though he were a fly caught in pancake-syrup.  Tara Stone helped him to pull himself onto the shore, where he rolled in the mud and coughed. 

 

“Papi!” he heard the little girl say.  She coughed a little and soon the old man was pounding her back and rubbing her shoulders.  

 

“Are you alright?”  Tara Stone asked him. 

 

“Uh… yeah,” Stake replied.  “Think I swallowed a lot of water, but I should be fine.  Oh, my knee!” 

 

He stood up shakily and then fell back down.

 

“We’ll get it looked at. Reckless idiot.” 

 

Stake smiled watching the little girl hugging her Papi and the children around them both, asking multitudinous questions.  The old man shouted something at him as he coughed.  His teeth tasted of clay.  He got back up on his feet again, the pain in his knee subsiding.  He looked out over the brown river and felt the high wind sheer his bones.  He was shivering and hurt, yet he was okay. 

 

The little girl was calling to him. 

 

He was okay. 

 

 

 

 

 

The girl he’d rescued was named Reyna Torres.  She and her grandfather visited Anthony Stake often, even after they’d learned that he was a Bonekeeper.  Stake enjoyed the visits and found it interesting how the soft sadness that defined his life could fade away for small moments as he watched the girl play with his kitten.  The two of them, individually and together, could make life just seem okay. 

 

“I am unused to being a hero,” he said to the newest hire among the Bonekeepers, a young man by the name of Nick Alva, whom everyone called “Sparky.”  It had been his nickname since adolescence, even though he technically was still an adolescent.  He was done with his basic schooling and was shuffled off into the Bonekeepers’ Union due to his family’s inability to give him any higher schooling and “just their inability to care” – according to the boy.  They’d called him “shiftless,” but Tony Stake found him quite industrious, at least when there was work to be done. He seemed uniquely suited to some of the nastier work, too.   

 

The Project Head and the new hire spent a rare moment when the latter didn’t have ear buds plugged into his head to talk, sitting upon the edge of one of the older parts of the Sacred Wall. 

 

“The town doesn’t look at you much different, do they?” Sparky commented. 

 

“Not most of the town, no,” Stake replied. 

 

“World’s full of festering assholes if you ask me,” Sparky said, popping a piece of chewing gum into his mouth.  “Don’t appreciate nothin’ ‘less you forget to do it for ‘em once or twice.”

 

“It’s not that…” 

 

“You can’t take too much stock in what other people think of you,” Sparky said, giving him a sincere, bright-eyed smile.  “They only want what you can do for ‘em.  Even some of the kindest acts someone can do are just for some kind of recognition.”

 

“I didn’t rescue the kid for recognition.”

 

“I know that.”  Sparky gave Anthony a pat on the shoulder.  “You just had an impulse, right?”

 

“Yeah.  I saw that wall of water coming and the girl still in the river.  I had to do something.  I just didn’t even think.” 

 

“That’s the best thing about you, Anthony, I believe.” 

 

“What?  That I don’t think?” 

 

“No,” Sparky replied, “that you have the kind of impulse in you that doesn’t care what happens to you if you can help another person.” 

 

“Hmmm,” Stake muttered looking out over the grass-fields lit in colors by the sunset.  The fall of dusk right outside of the wall around the Dark Gate was always spectacular.  “It could just be that I didn’t value my own life,” he said.  “Reyna is young.  She has potential ahead of her. My future is written and the future in general? It may just not have a place for me.” 

 

“What do you mean?” Sparky said, shuffling through song-titles on his music player.  It was a rare bit of technology, one of those things imported from elsewhere.  Few people had them and it was the one bit of “frivolity” the young man’s parents had allowed to him before sending him off to the job he’d have for the rest of his life and choosing not to speak to him anymore.   

 

“You know, I’m not really sure,” Anthony Stake admitted. “Maybe it’s some of my old-fashioned hopes and fears.  Maybe it’s that I feel like our wall will be broken down someday.  I don’t know.  I hope that there’s something more to this life than just what’s been handed to us.  The world hasn’t been very fair to you, has it?”

 

“There you go again, thinking about me instead of yourself. The future doesn’t hold much for anyone in the end save the Wall, really… or, you know, not being in the wall.  I’m sure the desert’s full of bones.”  After that, perhaps sensing that he didn’t have anything helpful to offer, Sparky changed the subject completely.  “Where did you get the new suit?” 

 

“The Torres family got it for me. I still have the old one… making repairs on it.” 

 

“Why?” It’s gotta be all tore up.” 

 

“Because it’s mine.  I don’t feel comfortable in this one.  It’s gray, not brown, first of all.  Also, it’s not got stitches and it fits me well… I’m really not used to being looked at with the respect due a suit like this.” 

 

“You saved someone’s life – a small someone.  People are going to give you at least a little bit of respect no matter what you’re wearin’, even if you’re one who works with flesh n’ bone and dust n’ ashes.” 

 

“Like I said, I’m just not used to it.” 

 

 

 

 

The fame of the “Hero of the Flood” was short-lived.  As Flynn got on with its every day business and with the business of living and dying, Anthony Stake received painful work.  

 

Gabe Harper died two months after he had turned age thirteen.  He had a disease that was not contagious, but serious and might have been better treated if he had not been born in Flynn.  He’d slipped peacefully into his dusk in the cold light of dawn, which he’d seen outside of his hospital room window just moments before drifting to a smooth sleep that was, for a change, undisturbed by his own harsh breathing - even before the breath stopped altogether.  It happened about an hour before his parents’ daily visit to the hospital and his attending doctors were glad of it because if they had been there, they would have demanded they do the impossible and to try to keep their child alive beyond all sense of reason or mercy.    

 

Anthony Stake and Korrina Crucia had attempted to explain to the Harpers that the way they handled children was through burial first so as to psychologically distance themselves from the subject.  To do the direct butchery-cleaning of an elderly person’s bones or even the bones of a younger adult was far less disturbing to them than to do the same for the very young.  The Harpers did not wish to wait a year to see their Gabe honored in the Wall.  They demanded the quick method. 

 

“You don’t understand,” Stake said when consulting the bereft couple.  “We reserve what little burial space Flynn has just for cases like this.” 

 

“Why should you care?” Mr. Harper growled at him.  “You Bonekeepers are half-souled beasts, anyway!  It’s not like you’ll be joining my only son in Heaven and will have to see him again!  Do the only thing you demons are good for!”

 

“It hurts the heart too much with childr-”

 

“Heart?” the old man sneered.  “You creatures gave them up upon signing the Bonekeepers’ contract!  I will not wait a year to honor my son! You butchers are only good for one thing and you do not want me to take it up with the mayor and the Council!”

 

And that was how an accidental hero knew his place once more. 

 

He and Tara Stone took on the case and he was the one to start.  Thankfully, the Harpers wanted something simple as far as a design for the segment of wall that was to be their child’s memorial.  However, the fact that they wanted it as soon as possible and did, indeed, have the connections necessary to squeeze away the little pay the current Bonekeepers had or to force them all into exile made things very difficult. 

 

Korrina Crucia could handle most of the flenching work but absolutely could not deal with children.  She was a tough woman, but turned into a quivering pile of pain at the thought of dealing with anyone under the age of seventeen or so.  She’d never been a mother, but it did not matter.  Stone and Stake were absolutely not going to let a new hire like Sparky in on it.  He’d volunteered to help them take care of the case, making a show of his general misanthropy and grit, but neither of the Project Heads would allow it.  They knew that he was probably full of the bluster of youth and would find the experience as scarring as any of they did. 

 

Crucia tended to deal with the skulls last, not being able to bear looking at someone’s face while sheering off the muscles from their limbs and so forth.  As the remains of Gabe Harper lay upon the butcher-table, Anthony Stake chose to handle matters the other way around.  He stared at the boy’s cold, pale skin and shaggy brown hair.  He was a handsome boy; despite the emaciation his killing-illness had left him and the fact that he was a corpse. 

 

Stake stroked the child’s cheek and kissed his cold forehead with a flourish that made Tara Stone pause as she was sharpening equipment.  “Farewell,” he said before beginning a scalp. 

 

With that kiss, Stake decided that life was pointless. 

 

He had saved the life of one child he had not known and was bidding farewell to another child he had not known. 

 

His future had been written for him.  He would, for the rest of his life, be a Bonekeeper.  He could be nothing else – a half-souled butcher who walked the gray lands between Life and Death.  Of course the future was not for him, but it wasn’t much for anyone. 

 

The Wall awaited everyone. 

 

 

 

**_Joseph Murrika – Log_ **

 

 _Mr. John Guile shared with me some of the words he’d spoken during Mr. Anthony Stake’s incorporation ceremony.  The sermon had been written down by Mr. Axxel Hatcher_. 

 

_This is what he said to the crowd that had gathered for it:_

_“What our friend Anthony Stake did was not a cowardly act.  It was an act of bravery.  I know most of you do not want to hear this, but it is much easier to accept if one thinks upon the varied nature of bravery.  Courage is not always good.  That reckless disregard for consequences that led Anthony to risk his life and to risk pain to rescue young Miss Torres is just about the same kind of thing that might erase care for our greatest fear…_

_He disregarded the fear of death for just enough time to run headlong to it and to whatever he saw in it that was worth ignoring fear.  I knew Anthony and can never call him cowardly.  The most I can say is that, in the end, he was reckless._

_“He left his marks on us all:  A tender kiss and a brutal scar.”_

_I was told that many more attended both the initial funeral and the incorporation than the subject of them would have likely ever expected._

_A girl named Reyna Torres lights a small candle below his skeleton at the pillar once a week at sunset and waits there until it burns out._

 

 

If he could tell you what had ultimately led to his decision, Anthony Stake wouldn’t be able to tell you.  It seemed like it was a jumble of things that were swirling around in his head about a week after he’d dealt with the Harper case.  The half-cleaned bones of the unfortunate boy fell under the keeping of the Lynches.  The sense of arbitration about the problems, triumphs and flows of life had not gone away. 

 

Taking rest from working on Wall-designs or even talking with the other Bonekeepers had only found the man apathetically plunking down food for his cat, stroking him at intervals, but not bothering to play games with the flashlight or with feathers like he usually did during the evenings.  Paladin was still a welcome presence on the bed where anything small, warm and alive that was larger than a mouse was a comfort. 

 

The imagination was a double-edged blade.  It entertained and drove creation but also led to every cruel scenario.  Stake sat on his couch staring intently at the wall of his small home, imagining a spectral door.  He did not know what was on the other side of it.  His friend, John Guile and the people that man kept company with outside of the job-relations believed there were other worlds behind it and that even though people like them could never aspire to the more beautiful worlds, the gray world was not so bad.  Anthony Stake loved the desert at night and believed that the Darklands might be like that.  Many just thought it was deep darkness that awaited one on the other side, the kind of void that even the distant stars could not dot and light, or a twilight-realm of sleeping forever. 

 

For his part, Stake wondered if eternity consisted of standing in the doorway, under the frame, feeling whatever last pulse, listening to whatever flashbang, or feeling the sting of some last cut forever in a moment that never ends because it can’t - because perception would not allow for that.  No one could perceive their own end, but perhaps the end was whatever one perceived it to be? 

 

Would his be beautiful?

 

Stake imagined dogs behind him.  They weren’t the cute and fluffy dogs that ran as strays around Flynn, feared for their occasional horrific diet.  They weren’t the well-kept dogs that the wealthier families bred for fashionable traits that people would walk on leashes in the center of town, either.  These creatures were a dark gray mass of entangled fur.  Yellowish teeth gleamed like straight ivory daggers and jagged shattered stones. Their rag-skinned mouths dripped with thick saliva. Their heads held hosts of twisted horns and they looked like they were covered in shit – not something that could be described with such tame words as “dung” or “manure” – but shit. 

 

The dogs wanted him to run through the door.  They were going to tear him apart.  They each had names like “Failure” and “Apathy” and “Worthlessness.”  “Never Enough” was a particularly vocal barking beast.    

 

Stake could shake his head free of these imaginings for a while.  He did not see them as apparitions.  He knew he wasn’t right in the head, but he wasn’t so far gone that his dreams were mixing into his waking life.  However, the fact that he could imagine beasts nipping at his heels and felt that they represented truths was enough to make him rummage through his kitchen for a way to gain passage through the imaginary door. 

 

If life was arbitrary, why did he stick around?  Why did those with futures lose theirs?  He knew that his friends would experience great ache of the soul, but he also believed that they would move on.  Life always moved on. They didn’t need him anymore. Time and money did not care at all for grief.  Both things ploughed it under. If there was anything a longtime Bonekeeper knew; it was that life continued, vibrant, while the Wall remained still, those in it to be remembered only at the convenience of the living.  Anthony Stake did not much like the idea of giving up control – for he knew he would have no say in how others recalled his life or in what honor or dishonor they would choose to give him.  All the same, he felt something pulsing within him, an urge with which he was familiar.  It was a sense of self-destruction, beating him forward like a man with a whip abusing a horse.  He considered the knives in his kitchen drawer, the ones that he kept for preparing meat.  They were a bit different than the Bonekeeper’s knives, but he kept them just as sharp.  Given his work, he knew how to sharpen a knife. 

 

The arbitration would end today – that is what the _drive_ told him.  He knew that his heart _should_ care, but it didn’t.   What he did know was that he needed to choose the sharpest knife in the drawer.  If he’d taken a dull knife, as soon as he’d felt it against his skin, he would back out. 

 

Any number of things would make him back out.  A knife that wasn’t sharp enough to do the job in one quick swipe… the cat meowing for attention, someone coming to the house and knocking on the door at just the right time.  However, none of these fell into the favor of preserving Anthony Stake’s life. 

 

He unlocked his front door and scrawled a simple note to put onto his refrigerator with a little flower-shaped magnet.  It was not an explanation.  Stake doubted that any would be sufficient.  He simply wrote “Take care of Paladin.” He was sure that said cat was sleeping somewhere, probably in his open sock drawer again. 

 

Stake sat down in one of the dining room chairs in the kitchen.  He gently pressed the blade of the long, curved filleting knife to the skin behind his right ear.  He pressed in and swiped down.  For a split second, he didn’t know if he’d done anything at all.  That’s when the floor came up to meet him and when caught a glimpse of his trembling hand gripping the handle of the knife, covered in blood. 

 

That’s the way deep cuts from a sharp blade could be sometimes – things that were not felt until seconds later.  He felt the sting in that span of time, but more than that, Stake felt a dropping feeling and a feeling of fading.  He felt his body hit the floor.  His elbow slammed into the tile and he felt more pain in the bone than he did from the wound in his neck.  He saw the kitten pad into the kitchen, watching its tiny, soft feet approach his face.  He couldn’t get up.  There was red everywhere, slicking the linoleum.  

 

The cat sniffed his nose and for a moment, life was just okay. 

 

He felt it fading.  There was a split-second of fear, followed by a gray feeling.  Gray, gray…gray.  The colors in the kitchen remained as bright as always, especially the growing pool of blood, but emotion was blurred into a dull acceptance. 

 

_I’m sorry little kitty…_

_I’m sorry…everyone…_

_I don’t know for sure what’s…beyond…door…way…_

_Whatever happens…_

_Out of my control…_

_No more control… going…Letting go…_

_Good…_

_…bye._

 

 

 

 

“The two of us found him, Korrina and me,” Tara Stone said as she, Korrina Crucia and Joe Murrika stood before Stake’s pillar.  Stone held the lanky, grown-up Paladin in her arms.  “We went by the house the next day because he had not come to meet us for breakfast.  What I remember was seeing red paw prints on the living room carpet.  I followed them to find the cat sitting on the dining table licking his paws and, well… him… there on the kitchen floor.  He was in his suit – his old one, with the mended rips.”   

 

“I remember coming into the house,” Crucia said, and seeing the bloody paw prints, but after that… It’s a blank.  My mind turns to blackness over everything else.  I remember that we found him, but I only know that as a fact.  The actual scene… my mind will not draw it up.” 

 

“And, that is how I got my cat,” Stone said to Murrika.  “I still consider Paladin his, though.  He will always be Anthony’s cat.”  


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a kudos on this, so, as long as someone's paying attention, I thought I might as well release further chapters. I actually have most of what I've done on this work so far up in first draft form on my Deviant Art account. I had hoped that putting this work on here might encourage some comments. I have only a vague idea of ultimate direction and most of what I have so far is in the way of character-studies. From my own hard-copy editing I know that my dialogue needs a LOT of work. I appreciate any kind of feedback, solid suggestions / help - particularly because this is original, "real," non-fanfic work. 
> 
> The dialogue on this chapter especially needs work *wince.* Help!

**The Bonekeepers’** **Union**

**Chapter 4**

 

 

 

The two men looked at each other, their eyes meeting in a mutual sideward glance.  They spoke to each other as one, a single word; 

 

“Spiders.” 

 

 

**_Joe Murrika Log:  - The events following Mr. William Schlitz’s incorporation ceremony –_ **

_It is somewhat known in the City of Flynn that two particular Bonekeepers, Masters John Guile and Axxel Hatcher do make some mischief.  On the rare occasion that someone disturbs those gathered to honor an incorporation – soon thereafter; the culprit is found with something unpleasant having been done to him or her.  It is never anything that makes more work for the Bonekeepers, but the things done are often painful or psychologically harrowing._

_The police of Flynn remain unsure who is behind these things other than a conspiracy among the Bonekeepers as a whole – but they look the other way.  It may be because the group is too lowly for the city to do much to them.  It could be because of their valued work.  There is much in the ways of consensus that it is more likely that they simply sympathize with the Bonekeepers in these matters._

_According to the Bonekeepers themselves, the mysterious retributions are carried out by those two men, and from what I’ve gathered, the retributions are not undeserved._

 

 

It was dark.  It was dark and cold and the air smelled oddly sour.  The young man registered that the skin above his waist was bare and that there were restraints upon his arms and legs.  Something uncomfortable tickled him, picking over his skin obnoxiously.  Tiny pinpoints made his body shiver.  Sanders struggled against the leather straps that held him to some sort of truss. 

 

In an instant, the room was lighted.  In the white-fuzzy brilliance of the humming overhead fixtures, Sanders was finally able to see the source of the tickling.  His scream echoed throughout the cinderblock room, but traveled no farther. 

 

“Don’t expect help,” said a voice at the top of a flight of stairs.  It belonged to one of two men that descended.  Sanders kicked and struggled against the floor and the metal bed frame to which he was bound. 

 

“Spiders!” he squeaked, his voice raspy with horror.  “What’s with all the spiders?” 

 

“Not to worry,” the elder of the two men said as they stood by the frame, “I assure you that they are all harmless species.” 

 

“Harmless?” the captive spat, “They’re spiders!” 

 

“None with lethal or particularly damaging venom,” the younger of the two men said with a smirk.  Sanders recognized him as the punk among the Bonekeepers with the antler-headdress.  The other one was the preacher- or, at least the cut-rate Bonekeeper-excuse for one. 

 

“Stag-boy and Rent-A-Priest…” the young man hissed, wincing as a small arachnid climbed up his neck, “Why are you doing this? You went through all the trouble of hunting these godawful things just to douse me in them?” 

 

“Yeah, duh!” the young man with the antler answered. 

 

“Indeed,” the older gentleman said with a nod.  “Axxel, do begin cleanup… that is, if you think our guest has had his due.” 

 

“I doubt that, John,” Axxel replied, “Do you see the look he is giving us?  So defiant, so petulant.” 

 

“You fags have got me covered in spiders!” 

 

“Fags?” John Guile asked.  “Do you have any idea of what that word denotes?  It is not a kind word in the way you are using it.  It harkens back to harsh executions.  Truly, as an insult, I fail to see its merit as such.  I assure you that dear Axxel and I are friends with no particular affection any other way, but if we were in another way, I hardly see why you should care about it.” 

 

Axxel bent low and began plucking the larger spiders off of Sander’s body, housing them in a woven-reed fishing creel.  “And what you were doing to unsettle our client’s family was most unseemly,” he said, his veneer of civility as thin as tissue-paper.  “I am afraid we had no choice but to discipline you.” 

 

“Discipline?  Ha!” Sanders shouted as he rolled up some thick saliva on his tongue and spat at Axxel, which was quite a feat for the state of mild dehydration he was in.  “I was telling the truth!  My only regret is that your ‘client’ was too dead to hear it!” 

 

“Strong words coming from someone who is still tied up.” 

 

Sanders grit his teeth as a daddy-long-legs clambered up his side.  “He was a bitter, superstitious hypocrite!” he growled. “And if his idiot family is that superstitious, then they deserve to cry more!”

 

“You had a problem with the words I gave Mr. Schlitz’s family and friends for comfort?”  John Guile asked. 

 

“Well, whoopee-dip, Rent-A-Priest.  You deserve to be jumbled up in the Wall with him!’ 

 

Axxel gave Sanders a hard smack across the face.  “You don’t get to talk about my friend that way!  Or any of our clients!” he ordered.  “I’m not much for what you call that ethereal junk, either, but I know what respect is.  There is a difference between defending yourself in the face of power and kicking people when they’re down.  You crossed a line back there, Sweetheart.  Do you want to know something very special?” 

 

“If it will get me out of these straps, lay it on me.” 

 

Axxel crouched and leaned in, closing the gap between their faces with each word; “You. Are. Arbitrary!” 

 

Sanders flinched at the shout in his ear.  The boy wearing the antler caught his breath and continued to speak, even as he stood upright.  “Do you think that you really are better than the man we buried in the Wall and did a ceremony for the other day?  His life was shaped by his circumstances, his genetics and a whole lot by chance.  Do you think you could have lived his life for him somehow better?  You are an existence drifting in a sea of possibility just as he was, only under different circumstances.  One day, you will be in the Wall, too.  You’d better just hope that we or our successors will treat your bones well out of a sense of generosity and duty because that’s the only hope you’ve got!” 

 

John Guile smiled – a much too wicked smile for someone who had supposedly dedicated his life to righteousness and the pursuit of a benevolent higher power.  “I do not know what personal affront you suffered that led you to harassing Mr. Schlitz’s mourners, but he had mourners – Ones that showed up to our doings and not just for the first funeral.  Ask yourself, young man, will you have mourners?  I don’t think anyone even searched for you all the time you’ve been in our… care.  I suggest that once we let you go that you give serious thought to living your life in such a way that you will gain some.” 

 

With that, Guile soaked a cloth in some kind of liquid chemical.  Sanders knew where this was going.  He woke up hours later just inside the main wall of Flynn in naught but his undershorts with his clothing in a haphazard pile beside him. 

 

There was a note pinned to his shirt in the pile _.  “You’d best be staying away from the fresh bones and mortar for a while.  We. Are. Watching.”_   

 

 

 

 

Sanders was the kind of person who delighted in giving people bad news.  It wasn’t just that he had a set of things he thought about fate and destiny that he believed to be hard truths that people should know – no, he didn’t care about helping or elevating anyone.  He just enjoyed making people who were afraid even more afraid and those in grief even worse off.  He was the kind of person who would tell a little girl who believed her dead puppy went to the Heavens that it didn’t and that it had died in pain – not out of a sense of truth, but because he liked feeling superior to someone who was crying.   It was said around Flynn that he had done that once…. The little girl was his youngest cousin.  If the young man had believed in a torturous afterlife, as a few in Flynn did according to the old legends, he probably would have tried to tell his cousin that her pet had went to Hell. 

 

There were a few of those like that who came to the incorporation ceremonies.  They were something of a side-show for a while until mysterious things started happening to some of the more prominent of them.  It wasn’t just spiders.  Some were thrown into the Bonekeepers’ insect-pit to crawl around in goop, remains and the possibly literal ton of beetle-excrement at the bottom.  A few awakened to find themselves hanging with their feet tied, hung upside-down from thorny trees in the desert beyond the walls.  Some were locked in one of the dry bone rooms at night, fully-awake to see the skulls staring at them. 

 

The worst of the protests and heckling stopped after that.  Only the occasional individual like Sanders ever gave the Bonekeepers a problem. 

 

After all, it was expected that they could do far worse to someone foolish enough to get on their bad side. 

 

 

Axxel and Guile sat beneath the full moon atop a portion of the Wall that vanished into unfinished proto-rubble on one end and into a pillar on the other before continuing on to the Fire Gate. 

 

“Well, you won’t know what it’s like for you until it happens to you,” Guile said to his younger friend.  

 

“Why do you follow the creed?” Axxel asked.  “You aren’t going to get any ultimate reward out of it.  The people at your temple have already condemned you to the Darklands.” 

 

“Isn’t it obvious?”

 

“Isn’t what obvious?” 

 

“I follow what I follow because I really believe in it.” 

 

“You’re smart, Guile.  Give me the truth.” 

 

“That is the truth.  I really do believe.  I don’t hate you if you think it makes me a bit of a waste of life.  Many people have tried to tell me that I am wasting my life for the things that go on largely in the privacy of my own mind when I am alone.  I have always said back at them that I’m sure that my life would be a waste in their eyes regardless of anything I held or did simply because it’s not _their_ life.   You have to ask yourself, whenever you’re tempted to think another person is ‘wasting their life’ – Is it only because you are resentful that you cannot control them?  We don’t have wind-up hearts. Mine seems to be hopelessly bent to something more than life’s known mechanics.  Maybe it is a waste.  I do not know.”   

 

“It doesn’t seem sensible to me.   I don’t trust in stories when I can’t see or touch the substance of them.  It makes a lot more sense to me to be content with our world, as it is, and in any way we can make it better… though I don’t expect it to ever become as good as I want it to be even long after I’m in the Wall.” 

 

John Guile pointed to his own head and smiled.  “You… want to be buried with the antler, right?” 

 

Axxel laughed.  “Yeah…  So what kind of world do you want?  Something ethereal that we cannot touch and that your own temple tells you that you can never enter?” 

 

Guile sighed and looked up at the stars.  “Not that.  If it’s possible to achieve it in a world of humans, I’d love to see it happen here.  I long for a world where that isn’t merely one where no one ever dies; I hope for a world where no one ever _wants_ to die.”

 

“We are near Anthony’s pillar.” 

 

“I know. I’ve been thinking long and hard about my theology and cosmology and philosophy and everything else since we lost him.  I really can’t stand the thought that he’s just dissolved into nothing, you know?  Or that he’s even in the Darklands, though that place is probably still better than our world, as dull and drear as it is supposed to be.  There’s always the fear that his mind is trapped in its last conscious moment, perhaps in pain, because of the nature of minds.”

 

“Hmmm,” Axxel said, shrugging his shoulders.  “I assume that people just go into the dark. The thoughts start slowing, sensation ceases and it’s like sleep.”

 

“You assume a lot,” Guile said.  “You assume that the mind doesn’t cease on some kind of suffering thought, in a moment, or that people don’t start dreaming some last dream. Is there darkness unless you are aware that you are going into the dark?  My temple-people assume a lot, too – that the righteous are swept up in light while the wicked and those of us who handle human flesh and bone are cursed to wander an eternally gray country.”

 

“Again, why do you do work for the temple and do your rituals when you think you’re just going to wander in the gray as a non-reward?  If belief is just lodged in your brain like a bad habit you can’t get rid of, that’s one thing, but why do you _serve_? It baffles me.”   

 

“Because not everything is about rewards, my friend,” Guile answered.  “Or, at least, I get my own, personal rewards from it.  Sometimes, a creed is a good one to follow, regardless of whether or not there’s a clear benefit in the eyes of outsiders.  In fact, I’d say that the temple could give you quite a lot of material aid if you were a part of it, but I would never ask its rituals of you, because it’s not who you are.” 

 

“So, it gives you meaning.”

 

John Guile grunted, clearing his throat.  “That is another thing we all assume, even people who pretend not to.  We all live for meaning.  Without it we starve, we drown, we die.  We either pretend that our lives are meaningful in an arbitrary world because of the things we do, or maybe we think we’re ‘better’ than certain other people, or we do think that something Unseen has an unseen hand in it all and things are going to work themselves out.  We might just be toys in a toybox, amusing mechanics.  We might just be random biomass confusing our survival with a reason for being alive.  Meaning is an assumption, but we need it.” 

 

Guile hopped off the wall and approached the big pillar where the skeleton of a former friend was caught in eternal takeoff.  He stroked the lower legs and the poised feet, looking up at the skyward-gazing skull.  “You know,” he sighed, “If we really are just arbitrary, and even more if we might find ourselves trapped in a painful moment forever… I’d like to find as peaceful a way to enter the inevitable as soon as possible.  According to what was found…. Stake… he went violently, but quickly and, perhaps had some minutes to make his peace.  It seems a lot better than lingering, sick and wasted, doesn’t it?” 

 

He turned to Axxel, who had also hopped down from the wall. 

 

He continued; “I stay alive because I feel like there is a meaning beyond our control and our whims… something more than the dark… if not for me, then for others.  I long for that kind world where no one ever wants to die.  We do not live in that world.  My wife and my girls are gone – I see them maybe once a year because they just don’t want to see their insane dad who became a Bonekeeper.  I spend my time trying to mourn with those who mourn and to give them some kind of comfort only to be berated by upstart punks who can’t wait to see those who don’t fit their model of life become part of the Wall.  I find myself getting a new pain in my living bones with every birthday.  All there is for me is wasting away, don’t you think?” 

 

“What are you saying, John?”

 

Guile looked up at the pillar.  “What I’m saying is that sometimes…. I actually think our Anthony Stake had the right idea.  A quick death before the world swallows you up.  You won’t be there to watch the ravages to your body, your mind or your memory.” 

 

Axxel dashed to Guile and grabbed him by the shoulders.  The young man immediately crushed him in a bear-hug and rested his head upon his shoulder.  “Don’t say that!” he nearly wailed.  “Don’t you ever say that again!  I don’t care if you have impossible hopes! Or even if I think you might be a bit dim sometimes!”  He separated from Guile and looked him hard in the eyes.  “You’re my best friend, John.  You’re my best friend and the only family I’ve got anymore!  Stake didn’t have the right idea, because….” he caught his breath, tears lining his cheeks, “because he was family, too!  All of us are a family!  Maybe it’s hard to live in an arbitrary world, but sending ourselves wherever we go to early just leaves those we’ve so far been living for alone.” 

 

John Guile smiled.  Axxel returned it and patted him on the shoulder.  “It’s true. Without you, I would be alone.” He shook his head gently.  “I don’t want to be alone.”   

 

That’s when Guile ruined the moment by making a morbid joke.  “We could always go together.”

 

“No.” 

 

 

 


End file.
